


Imelda's Monster

by PurpleFlowerGardener



Series: Imelda's Universe [1]
Category: Monster Prom (Visual Novel)
Genre: After the end of the game, Alcohol, Bets, College, Drugs, Fluff sometimes, Hangover, Hell, Mario Kart References, Multi, Non-Graphic Smut, soft boi damien, video games - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-27
Packaged: 2019-10-31 17:24:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 20,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17853929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PurpleFlowerGardener/pseuds/PurpleFlowerGardener
Summary: We were young and very afraid. Specifically, we were afraid of failing our midterms.In which Damien is a little softer and has a little more in the way of social graces.Love and that kinda stuff. Oof.





	1. Halloween

“Boo,” I said in total deadpan. I’d just opened the closet to get my Halloween costume, and my roommate, Polly had been hiding just inside and had jumped out at me. However, this was such a common occurrence that I was totally unfazed. 

“Jesus, I have to find a new gag,” Polly whined.

“Yeah, no kidding,” I said and smiled. “To think, I used to be a total flincher.”

“That’s half the reason I kept you as my roommate. It was funny,” Polly said as she moved out of the way so I could reach in and grab my costume. While Polly was the slutty costume type, I am the total geek who cosplays a step further than everyone else. I pulled a white halter dress out of the closet. The only thing out of place about the dress was a huge red blood stain from a ‘bullet’ wound in the stomach. Around the hanger hung a black lace choker necklace and a gold eye mask. It was a simple outfit, but it would strike fear into the hearts of anyone who’d watched the latest season of House of Hellborn. I was going as the ghost of Emelia O, a ghost that followed abusers and drove them mad. The fact that I can make my eyes glow battery acid green did a lot for the potency of my costume. 

Polly was going as a slutty SAT exam.

“It wasn’t too funny for me,” I said and laughed a little. “Although it is a little funny in hindsight.” 

We got dressed facing away from each other. There had once been some tension between the two of us, but it had since passed. Polly had kissed me and I had kissed back, but it hadn’t been meant to last. We’d had gotten over it, and mostly could laugh about it, but there were still moments when the tension lingered. Such moments included when we had to change clothes in front of each other, so we always were sure to turn away. Once Polly had her short white dress on and I was in my halter dress, we resumed our previous level of banter.

“Polly, if you are anything at all, you certainly are creative about your whorishness,” I said and Polly laughed. Polly was wearing a strapless white dress with test ovals filled in all over her in stripes. The letters SAT were stamped over her chest, and she was pulling on thigh high white ripped up tights. She fluffed her hair in our dorm room mirror and pinned an adorable pencil barrett a little bit above her right ear. 

“I’m an artist, what can I say?” Polly said and I laughed. I did my hair and makeup as quickly as I could, and finally we were ready for Halloween. We walked out of the dorms with little on our persons besides clothes and phones and money stashed wherever it could be stashed comfortably. Already, the streets were filled with people dressed in different costumes, partying. This was college, and without all the kids, the holiday had begun to revolve around getting utterly shit faced. While there was candy, the main focus was alcohol. 

\---

Polly and I are drinking in no time. She’s got a way higher tolerance than I do, and she takes advantage of it. She outdrank three guys that night, three guys who are known to party more than is really healthy. 

The night blurs together. I taste cheap lollipops and utterly disgusting (and free!) candy corn flavored Vodka. College kids gotta get drunk somehow, and I am not one to fast for an easy buzz. At one point, I’m running after this guy who pinched my ass through my dress. I really come back to reality when Polly and I are in a Karaoke bar, and she’s shouting the lyrics of Waking Up In Vegas by Katy Perry. She finishes the song and someone else muscles their way onto the machine and starts warbling to some ancient pop ballad. Polly and I swam against the crowd to a table and Polly goes to the bar to order something for us to drink. Suddenly, someone’s hand is on my shoulder. I turn and make my eyes glow green.

The guy who touched my shoulder jumped back. He was a demon boy with only one horn.

“JESUS!” He shouted, and I grinned.

“Don’t touch girls without warning,” I said and laugh. Usually I’d be angry about some stranger touching me without permission, but I’m pretty happy right now. I’m lucky, drinking brings out a very happy and willing person in me. I am not particularly mad about this guy touching my shoulder, and I am down right happy to freak him out. 

“That is fucking terrifying. I saw- where’s the girl you were with?” He asked and I couldn’t help but crack a smile. 

“She went to the bar. Why?” I asked and he looked up toward the bar, but couldn’t seem to see her.

“She’s my friend from high school. I saw the end of her song. I was going to say hi, but she was just gone. Then I saw you,” he said and his eyes lingered on me. His eyes were glassy, and his mouth was just a little open. His face was angular and he had a hunger about his face that I doubted was there when he was sober. I probably looked a little like that too.

“Polly’s my roomate,” I said. “Pull up a chair. What's your name?” I asked, and he sat down next to me. Suddenly two glasses were set down on the table and Polly was looking at the guy slack jawed.

“Look what the jackass dragged in!” Polly shouted, enraptured. “Damien! It’s been so fucking long! Where have you been?!” 

Polly plopped down in the last empty chair and took a sip of whatever she’d ordered. I reached for my glass and took a sip. It was lime flavored and glowed the same shade of green as my eyes. It was better than the candy corn flavored vodka, but not by much. As I sipped the drink and got used to the flavor, I surveyed Damien. He appeared to be dressed as some sort of royalty. 

“Hell, of course. My dads said they missed me and limited my college choices to those in the inferno. Didn’t stop me from getting out, through. No prison nor school can hold me,” He said and smiled, well, demonicly. He looked back at me and looked me over. “Who the Omen?” 

“Imelda,” I said and raised an eyebrow. “And what the fuck gives you the right to refer to me like that?” 

Polly looked down at her glass. She’d suddenly gotten a sick look and cleared her throat. “Damien is the prince of Hell,” She said and looked back up. She knew that I had a total chip on my shoulder about my identity. Omen, an energy only suited to bring bad luck. I’d been on earth blowing off my job for the past 19 years, living like a regular monster. 

“So? Just cus his dads are the kings of Hell doesn’t mean he jerk himself off by pretending he’s better than me.” I said and drained my glass. Damien was frozen in a look of vague surprise and amazement. I stood up and flipped him off. “Go back to Hell, at least there your racism won’t get commented on.”

I turned and pushed through the crowd toward the door. I could hear Polly calling after me, but I ignored her. I was used to people thinking rude things about me, but people rarely actually said anything. Any time they did, I bit their head off in the figurative sense. It never really meant anything, but for the few words we’d shared had been pleasant. I’d hoped he’d be nicer. 

I got out onto the street and looked around. I made my way to a side street, called an Uber, got a ride home, and fell into my bed and into sleep without changing my clothes or taking off my makeup.


	2. Hungover

That night, I dreamed of home. I was floating in the void oceans below Hell, lacking physical form. I felt myself seeing old friends and family, being asked why I hadn’t come back yet. I didn’t answer them, because I knew it might not be a dream. It might have been an up link.

I woke up incredibly hungover. The light hurt and my brain didn’t like it when I moved. I crawled to the bathroom and drank more water from the faucet than I’d thought possible, and managed to take two advil. I went back into the room and ate some raw bread from the package and crawled back into bed. I slept again, but there were no dreams this time.

Polly woke me up around two in the afternoon. She was a lot less hungover than you’d expect. I felt a lot better after rehydrating and eating some bread and sleeping a more fitful sleep.

“So, what happened after I left the bar last night?” I asked, eating properly burnt and peanut buttered toast. 

“Damien and I had a couple of drinks and just talked,” Polly said and gazed into her gatorade. She’d picked them up last night. She’d gotten a dark blue one for herself and a dark green one for me. “He didn’t mean to be rude or anything. It’s sort of an inside joke between us. He really isn’t a racist.”

I didn’t reply. I just took a sip of my gatorade and looked out the window at the afternoon sky. I’d changed into a t-shirt and sweatpants once she’d woken me up. There had been some strange lines imprinted into my skin from sleeping in my dress, it had my skin looking like a road map.

“So, what is he doing here?” I asked after a due silence. 

“He’s escaping Hell,” Polly said flatly. “His dads mean well, but they really smother him. They want him to be the perfect prince of Hell, and not, well, they don’t want their son to be himself.”

“That sucks,” I said quietly. I could relate to his parental angst. 

“Yeah. He got a pass to attend high school on earth, but now his dads want him in Hell. Damien hates Hell. He’s been doing everything he can to stay on Earth, but it doesn’t always work out,” She said, not taking her eyes off her drink. 

I responded with a noise of sympathy, and Polly went on.

“He worked out an exchange program with our college and the one he was attending in Hell. he can renew it every year, so he’s going to be coming here from now on. His dads only just found out. They’re pissed, but don’t have the same rights on Earth that they do in Hell. He’s got asylum here for the next five years,” Polly said, and was silent. I lay back down on my bed and closed my eyes. 

“Why should I care?” I asked. 

“Because you should at least know the situation wasn’t as clear as you’d have thought. Damien isn’t a racist, and you should try to act like it didn’t happen if you see him again,” Polly said.

“Whatever,” I sighed. “I’m going to come to my own conclusions, but ok. I’ll take my anger with a grain of salt.” 

“Good, now let’s go to the dining hall. You need to eat something real.”

\---

To no one’s surprise, Damien sat in the dining hall, eating some sort of cereal. Polly rarely thought about my need for nutricion, so I knew something was up when she suggested I care for my health. She was a ghost- she never has to think about her own, why would she think about mine?

I went through the line and assembled the best hangover cure I could with the semi limited selection. A freshly fried egg, cold hashbrowns from this morning layered under the eggs to warm them up, a ‘fun-size’ bag of Fritos, cup of fruit, and a large glass of cranberry juice, which I unironically enjoy. Polly filled a two liter empty soda bottle with chocolate milk and vodka. Her hangover cure is to never let herself sober up.

Polly lead me over to Damien, who smiled at Polly and nodded soberly at me. As Polly re-inebriated herself and Damien ate his froot loops, I ate my timeless hangover meal. After I’d finished my food, minus the fritos which ended up coming with me back to my dorm room, I sat back and turned into the conversation. After Damien had realized I wasn’t going to really be paying attention to what was being said, he stopped paying attention to me. While he was talking to Polly, I listened.

“And so they’re like, ‘Damien, you are going to be King of Hell one day, you have to be ready for that time,’ and I’m all like ‘I’d rather fuck pigs for a living,’ and I guess they just didn’t like the image of me balls deep in a pig, so they tried to lock me in my room but they don’t know I’ve got an Om-” Damien suddenly realized I was tuned into the conversation. He stumbled for a second, but I said nothing, and he went on talking. “-Omen portal in my room, so I didn’t have to worry about being locked up.” 

“You’re not an oman, how can you use it?” I asked. I watched as he looked at me and analyzed my question.

“It usually just spits me out somewhere nearby and from there I can get to Earth,” He said. “As long as I’m smart about it. One time it spat me out twenty feet up above a pit of lava. Good thing heat doesn’t bother me.” 

“That’s lucky,” I said. “Usually Oman portals just flat out reject Nonomens. It’s lucky you can use it at all.” 

“I guess so,” he said and a small smile flickered over his face. “Useful as hell, Gotten me out of a ton of groundings.”

I smiled a little. “They’ve got a mind of their own. The thing is alive, you should know that,” I said. “It’s sentient.”

“Oof,” Polly said and laughed. “It doesn’t like you Damien. It was trying to kill you.” 

Polly laughed some more and I felt another smile creep onto my face. It didn’t help that Damien did a sort of grimace that twisted his features. 

They talked some more and I watched how he talked. His speech was vulgar and poetic about the strangest things, but suddenly straightforward about anything. His jaw was sharp and worked when he talked like he Really Cared about what he had to say. His mannerisms were nothing like an Oman’s would be. Emphatic about everything. I realized I was staring and as subtly as I could looked away. I think Polly noticed, because she gave me a VERY KNOWING look when I focused on her. At that point I made my exit. 

“I’m still kinda hungover,” I said and scooted my chair out and stood. “I’m going back to the room, see you later.”


	3. Mario Kart

“You pig fucking skank breath bitch! I WILL CUT BOTH OF YOUR TESTICLES OFF AND MAKE YOU TEABAG YOURSELF!” I screamed at the top of my lungs as I lost at Mario Kart. Polly howled in laughter louder than I’d screamed and Scott looked at me askance. Damien laughed with Polly. The ranking in the race went like this- Scott in first, Damien in second, Me in third, and Polly in last. Just as I was about to pass Scott and Damien and win the race, Damien had thrown a turtle shell at me and made me lose my head of speed. The Nintendo Switch belonged to Scott, but Damien had helped finance the extra controllers. 

“Hey, you mind not screaming that stuff so loud?” Scott said and looked toward the door nervously. “I don’t want the neighbors thinking anything.” 

“Lay off her, I’m pretty sure only college kids live in the building,” Damien said and sat back against the couch. His knee touched mine the slightest bit as he shifted positions and it didn’t move from me once he’d gotten comfortable. With his arm thrown behind my shoulders but not quite touching me, I was afraid to move. If I moved, he might take it that I minded his knee against mine.

As if on cue, someone knocked on the door. Looks were exchanged between the four of us. Scott cleared his throat and stood up. He walked toward the door and opened the door the slightest bit without unlocking the chain lock.

“Scott, It is one Am. I have class in the morning. So, kindly get your people to shut the fuck up,” The girl said. She was hidden by Scott’s back, but I knew her voice. High pitched and entitled. 

“Sorry Faith, we were playing Mario Kart. We’ll try to be quieter,” Scott said and closed the door.

“Faith?” Damien asked quietly. “Faith as in, the coven? What the fuck is she doing here?” 

“I thought her gang was still in Salem,” Polly said thoughtfully. 

“How haven't I seen them around here yet?” Damien asked. The look of utter bewilderment was kind of adorable. 

“They moved in across the hall a week ago,” Scott looked at Damien and raised an eyebrow. “How didn’t you notice?”

“To be fair,” Damien said. “I’ve been high for most of the week.” 

Polly laughed loudly again and Scott pushed her. 

“Big mood, man,” Polly said, still laughing. “Honestly me.”

The night drew on. What had started as a study session to help get Damien up to speed in his classes had morphed into energy drinks and impassioned Mario Kart. I glanced back to the textbooks on the shite coffee table that Scott had cobbled together from spare wood at his pack’s lumber yard, now covered in a layer of energy drink cans and chip bag detritus. Thinking about detritus reminded me of the chaos oceans, my homeland. Suddenly, I was so tired. 

“Imelda?” Polly asked and I zoned back into the conversation. 

“What?” I asked and Polly smirked. 

“Are you ready to go home? You got that whole foggy look,” she said and waved around her face a little to articulate her point. 

“Oh, yeah. I’m getting tired,” I said and shook my head a little to shake off the wisps of memory and stood up.

Damien made a sound of disappointment. “That's probably for the best. I mean, you have class tomorrow,” He said and picked up the Nintendo Switch controller and initiated a solo race. I raised an eyebrow. 

“How do you know that?” I asked. Damien looked back up at me as he raced in confusion.

“Know what?” he asked and glanced back at the game as he looked up at me. 

“Know my class schedule,” I responded, a strange feeling building in my throat.

“Oh, I don’t know. I’m good at patterns I guess. Don’t be so fucking paranoid,” He said and made another sound of disgust. He looked back to the screen and didn’t look back. 

“Let’s go,” Polly said and took my hand. 

\---

We walked in silence for a while, but then the words began to tumble out of me like late night drunks out onto sidewalks. 

“Every time it seems like he finally doesn’t fucking hate me, he goes and-” I paused, and put my arms around myself. I talked with my hands a lot, and I was a little self-conscious about it. “He acts like he genuinely likes me one minute, and the next he’s such a goddamn asshole!”

Polly walked next to me silently analyzing my words. She hasn't responded to anything I’d said in my impromptu rant yet, but it seemed like she had something just beyond her closed mouth.

“He isn’t being an ass- well he is, but you haven’t seen him truly assholeish. He just doesn’t like getting questioned. You are reading too much into it,” Polly said and didn’t look at me. She just kept looking forward. “He doesn’t hate you. He prefers you to a lot of people, he’s just- he’s just weird about new people.”

“What exactly do you mean by ‘he prefers me’?” I asked, squinting at Polly. She always took his side when I was angry. It was like she thought he could do no wrong.

“He doesn’t like most people. That’s you still reading too much in so little,” She said and shrugged. “He is hard to get along with. In fact, he’s a total asshole, but he’s worth it. Once he counts you a friend, he’d do anything to help you. He’s loyal as shit, he just doesn't have a filter.”

I was silent. I didn’t want logic. I wanted sympathy. I wanted her to shout with me to the rooftops, ‘Damien LaVey is a total dick and we are better than him!’ I wanted to go home, eat some chocolate, and go to sleep in the comfort of knowing at least I had Polly at my back.

“I don’t want to do this now. I don’t-” I sighed. “I just don’t care anymore. I gave it my best shot, but I just don’t fucking care anymore. He isn’t worth it.” 

I started walking faster and sped past Polly. I didn’t care, but I did. I liked her, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to be close with Damien, but I did. 

I ran.


	4. Reconciliation

Polly wasn’t there when I woke up. Polly wasn’t in the dining hall or library, or in our freshman composition class. I took an extra set of notes for her at the end of class and went back to my room. I was good at walking quietly, and I did. I felt bad about leaving Polly behind. What if she’d been kidnapped? What if she was being sold at auction to some creep who wanted a ghastly slave girl? The ‘what ifs’ went on and on until I got to my room when I heard two voices talking behind the door of our room, one belonging to Polly. The other was Scott.

I stopped by the door and listened to the crack. I had not done a lot of eavesdropping in my life but I knew how to do it without getting caught. I listened in.

“He didn’t really mean to be so snippy. He was just a little angsty,” Scott said and I heard one of the beds creak.

“I know, but Imelda doesn’t know it,” Polly sighed. “I want all my friends to be friends, but Imelda is kinda paranoid. She never acted like that before. I don’t know why she’s acting like that now. I mean, I got her to admit she didn’t think he was a racist, so-”

“She thought he was a racist?” 

“It was just a misunderstanding. Nothing really happened. She was drunk and overreacted.” 

“Oh. Well, maybe she likes him, in the like like way.” 

“Jesus Scott, ‘like like’? Are you fucking kidding me?”

“What, it’s not a bad description! I’d bet actual money on him and her getting together before winter break.”

Polly sighed loudly. “How does $100 sound?”

Scott laughed. “Sounds like I’ll be $100 richer.” 

“Whatever. She’s a little uptight about love and sex and that stuff. We should get her a male prostitute or something to blow off steam,” Polly suggested.

I cringed and walked a few paces back, and walked back to the door and opened it like I hadn’t been eavesdropping. 

“Hey Scott,” I said and sat down on my bed across from Scott and Polly. “What's up?” 

“Imelda, I have a really weird question for you,” Scott said, and I nodded.

“Then ask,” I replied.

“Would you profit from the presence of a male prostitute?” Scott asked and Polly paled. 

“We were thinking about for your birthday,” She interjected and forced a laugh. 

“I have to say that sounds fun, but I’d have to pass,” I said and forced a laugh. Scott nodded thoughtfully, as though I’d not been quite sarcastic. 

Polly didn’t look normal. She wasn't smiling or anything, only looking at me stonely. Seriousness was not a normal look on Polly’s face. 

“Polly, are you ok?” I asked. She nodded, but I didn’t believe her. “Seriously, what happened last night, after I left you in the street. You weren’t there when I woke up. I’m glad your alive- my imagination ran away with me when I had a better head on my shoulders.”

“I spent the night with them,” She tossed her head toward Scott, who nodded. “I’m just- I’m just tired. I don’t- whatever. I just miss high school. Relationships used to be easy.”

“I guess we had very different high school experiences,” I said and smiled ruefully. 

“I guess,” She said quietly. “Before, it wasn’t like this though. It was all about who went to prom with who, who spiked the punch bowl, who was hosting the after party. It used to feel like a breeze. Now- people seem more real somehow. I miss it being so simple.”

“Yeah,” Scott said and leaned back. “I feel like I’ve aged a hundred years since prom. I was so- young acting. I was so naive.” 

“You still are a little naive,” Polly said, a hint of her laughter in her voice. Scott cracked a smile.

“Yeah, a little,” Scott said and laughed. I laughed with him, and he smiled his winning smile at me.

“You seemed kinda down last night. I’m glad to hear you laugh,” He said and I smiled.

“I’m fine, I was just tired. And a little frustrated, but whatever. I’m A-Okay,” I said.

“That translates to ‘I am pissed at Damien for no reason’ in Imelda speak,” Polly said and I laughed. 

“I think I was overreacting a little. I was tired and a little grumpy. And he’d just robbed me of a win, do you expect me to respect a cheating bitch like him?!” I said emphatically. Scott laughed and Polly smiled. 

\---

D: Hey. 

D:I heard you're pissed at me. 

I: A little. For a dumb reason. 

D: reason?

I: Whenever it seems like you don’t hate me, you get all cold and assholish. I don’t really know what to think.

D: …

I: Sorry.

D: its fine. 

D: I know I’m like that. Its annoying at both ends.

D: I don’t mean to be like that.

I: So do you want to be friends with me or not?

D: I do want to be friends with you. 

I: then I think it doesn’t have to be much harder than that. Just try not to snap at me so much. I know it’s a little dramatic of me.

D: Yeah, it is. 

I: Hey

D: Just kidding :P

...

D: Do you want to come over? I’ll let you win at Mario Kart

I: Sure lol


	5. Faux 80's Teen Movie

“But- why?” Bottle Blonde on screen asked, her red lips drooping in an almost comical look of disbelief. Muscular Jock looked at Bottle Blonde sadly. 

“I just don’t love you,” He whispered and turned away, a look of beautiful sadness adorning his face. Muscular Jock left Bottle Blonde on screen, where she collapsed into herself over not going to prom with Muscular Jock. 

“How the fuck are they thinking about love? It’s supposed to be high school!” I whispered to Damien, but whispering was only a formality. The movie theater was utterly empty but for the two of us.

“SHHH It’s Hollywood high school drama. It doesn’t have to make sense,” Damien said at his normal talking voice. 

This movie had tanked in the reviews- it was supposed to be reminiscent of 80’s teenager movies, and it was vaguely, but it only took the worst tropes of 80’s teenager movies and left out all the good ones. There was the Geek Girl and Geek Boy. Geek Girl in love with Jock Boy, Geek Boy in love with Bottle Blonde. Jock boy in love with Bottle Blonde, who is in Love with Jock Boy. In a ‘twist of fate,’ Geek girl needs to help tutor Jock Boy in school and eventually gets a makeover and wins his heart. Jock Boy dumps Bottle Blonde, who seeks solace in Geek Boy’s arms. They all end up happy, except for Bottle Blonde who has to settle for Geek Boy. They all go to prom, and Geek Girl and Jock Boy are voted Prom King and Queen. The end.

I was bored out of my mind. The only reason we were seeing it is because the theater was practically trying to give away tickets, and Damien and I were poor college kids. A free movie is a free movie after all, but there comes a point where you can’t shovel and more tired tropes down your throat.

“I would rather cut my ears off and scoop my eyes out with a melon baller than watch another second of this crap!” I said loudly. It felt naughty to speak loudly in an active movie theater, but It felt nice.

Damien looked at me for a second, reached into his pocket, and withdrew a melon baller. 

“Jesus Christ Damien,” I said and rolled my eyes. “What else do you have in your pocket?”

Damien reached back into his pocket and withdrew two pocket knives, a receipt for the movie, and a golf ball. I reached over and grabbed the golf ball and stood up. 

“What are you doing?” Damien asked as I hopped over a few rows of seats.

“Conducting an orchestra,” I said and rolled my eyes. I found my way to the front of the theater and set the golf ball down. Near the fire exit was a push broom and a dustpan. I grabbed the dustpan and set it near the other side of the theater. I returned to where I’d set the golf ball down and grabbed the broom. 

“Seriously, what are you doing?” Damien asked as he vaulted a few rows to get close to me.

“It’s called Colfing,” I said and smiled. Damien walked next to me and smiled. He leaned against one of the chairs and watched my actions. “A mixture of Curling and Golfing.”

I put the broom down next to the ball and nudged it with more power than I meant to, and the ball went forward and jumped into the dustpan and clanged loudly and bounced out. In the movie we were ignoring, Jock boy and Geek Girl were studying together.

“Impressive,” Damien said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. 

“Thank you,” I said, matching his sarcasm. “I value your input ever so much.”

“As you should, I’m fucking awesome,” He said and pushed off from the chair and walked toward me and took the broom from my hand. In the movie we were ignoring, the Geek Girl was gushing about Jock Boy to Geek Boy, and Geek Boy is wondering what is so great about Jock Boy.

“Think you can do better?” I asked and he grinned devilishly. 

“I know I can. I am a Colfing champion,” He said and retrieved the golf ball. 

“Is that so?” I asked and smiled back at him.

“Two gold Olympic medals. I compete in 2018 in Pyeongchang and in Sochi in 2014. I won gold for Hell both times,” Damien said as he lined up his shot. The ball rolled into the dustpan and didn’t bounce out and he gloated.

“Sounds glamorous. And you obviously have the skills to back it up,” I said.

“It was. I drank hot buttered rum with socialites in Sochi and ate ramen with the youth of South Korea. Just kidding, I like neither socialites nor children. In fact, I eat them both for breakfast,” He said and set up the dustpan at an angle from where I stood and brought back the ball and handed it to me. “Lets try bank shots.”

“Geometry, one of the few math types I’m not horrible at,” I murmured. On the screen, Geek Girl is in the process of doing a small makeover to *hopefully* gain the amorous attention of Jock Boy. 

“I’m not so bad at Geometry myself,” Damien said, not sarcastic for the first time in the whole conversation.

“Well, we’ll see,” I said, and banked the Colf ball off the wall into the dustpan. I stood back from the wall and smiled at Damien. I handed him the broom and retrieved the colf ball. I handed it to him and he brushed it against the wall and missed.

“Fuck!” He exclaimed, and I laughed.

“Say, while we’re even on points, why don’t we make this a little more interesting,” I said and Damien eyed me suspiciously.

“How do you mean?” He asked and I smiled.

“If you win, I’ll owe you one, if I win, you’ll owe me one,” I said. “Sound good?”

“Sounds fun,” he said and grinned. “An odd number of rounds, so it’s obvious who wins. 9 sound good?” 

“Sounds good,” I affirmed, and we began the game. We ignored the first two rounds and made up new rules on the spot to make Colfing more interesting. Just like both of it’s parent sports, Golfing and Curling, Colfing is boring as hell if you’re not playing with someone who can make up new rules on the spot. Luckily for me, Damien was nothing if not interesting. 

In the end, Damien won. It was only by one point, but he turned to me grinning. One point ahead now, and if I couldn’t make it into the dust pan, I would lose. If I did make it into the dustpan, we’d play another round until one of us pulled ahead in the same round. The game’s rules were flawed, but we came up with the game while watching a horrible teenager movie that pretended to be from 39 years older than it really was. 

I brushed the colf ball under two chairs and it rolled up to the dustpan but didn’t have enough momentum to get over the lip and in. 

“FUCK!” I shouted and tossed the broom down and straightened up. Damien was grinning as evilly as he could.

“FUCK YEAH!” He shouted, crossed his arms and smirked at me. On the movie screen, it was the prom scene.

“I guess I owe you one,” I said and made a sound of disappointment.

“You do,” He said and continued to smirk at me darkly.

“What would you like?” I asked, praying he wouldn’t make a gross joke.

“I think I’d like to bank my prize,” He said and nodded. I was relieved he wasn’t going to do something gross, now at least. 

“Ok, now what?” I asked. Damien picked up the Colf ball, pulled a sharpie out of his other pocket, wrote ‘colf’ on the colf ball, and handed it to me.

“A present. How about we watch the movie?” He said and tossed his head toward the silver screen. I nodded, and we sat down in the front row to watch. 

The prom had ended, and Geek Girl was prom queen. However beautiful she was now, she would always be the Geek Girl, but now that she was gorgeous, everyone loved her for her myriad nerdisms. Geek Girl and Jock Boy go back to her house, what we assume, to fuck. They get up to her room, and instead of a love scene, there is a heartfelt speech on the Jock Boy’s behalf, about how he’d been so blind to her. He proposes and she says yes. Credits roll.

“The movie sucked, but I feel I paid a good amount for the experience I got,” Damien said and I nodded.

“I agree,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”

\---

We put the dustpan and broom away and we leave the movie theater. We walk back to our dorms together, talking idly about stuff. I feel happy, and I am smiling. I’m smiling more than many people can make me smile, and it feels weird but also wonderful. 

We stop in front of my dormitory, Damien and Scott’s apartment is two blocks down the street. He turns to me and looks at me very seriously. I look up at him with mild interest. He isn’t much taller than me but he’s pretty close right now and I need to look up to look him in the face. 

“Imelda,” He says.

“Damien,” I say, a smile creeping onto my lips. 

As if it was the most natural thing in the world, Damien leans down and kisses me. I kiss him back. The kiss isn’t much past the lips, but there is a burning in the way he kisses me that leaves me breathless in the most overused trope way imaginable. It must be all the horrible movie impairing my judgment.

Damien breaks the kiss a short time after it starts, but I don’t want him to stop. 

“I had a really awesome time,” I blurt out. “I want to do that again. And the kissing part too but just then I meant the movie and hanging out but the kissing part I could stand to continue with if you know Scott is out of the Apartment because Polly brought home a guy and I don’t know if their there still-”

Damien leans down and kisses me again, silencing my word vomit.


	6. Mortality

Damien and I ran down the street toward his apartment. Scott was gone for the night, who knows where. 

Damien and Scott’s apartment was fairly sparse. A fairly nice couch (Courtesy of a curb in a nice neighborhood), a goodwill TV stand and hand built coffee table. No dining room table, just a peninsula in the kitchen with stools. The kitchen was bare of anything really extravagant accept for a nice toaster oven (Courtesy of Scott’s pack). 

Damien’s bedroom was messy, as you would expect. There was a desk with a Dell laptop on it charging. There were two chairs, one at the desk and one in the corner covered in dirty clothes. He had a goodwill dresser and mirror across from his bed, and the top of it was covered in random stuff. His bed wasn’t made, but I didn’t care. It would just have gotten messed up all over again. 

Damien had ditched the closed mouth kissing fairly quickly. He had held onto my wrist hard as we ran down the street, his nails digging into my wrist. The pain excited me. 

Time went quicker. We seemed to fly down the street toward his apartment building and up the stairs because the elevator was just too slow. Damien dropped his keys while fumbling with them at his door and he shouted “FUCK!”

I took his hand and crouched and picked up the keys. 

“Slow,” I whispered, and he blinked. “We’re not racing.”

He took the keys from me and unlocked the door. It swung open and we walked inside. We made absolutely sure Scott was out and went to his bedroom. My four words had seemed to calm Damien, and now he didn’t go so fast as to make mistakes. 

He turned to me once the door to his room was closed, eyes on fire. Just as it looked like he was going to say something, I spoke.

“Fuck me, in the quite literal sense,” I said and Damien’s look of bewilderment melted to utter joy. He was on me, kissing me. His hands pulled my shirt off over my head and unbuckled my jeans. I was in nothing but my underwear and bra quickly enough to wonder how many times he’d done this. I pulled his jacket off and then his shirt, but Damien was too impatient to wait and let me finish stripping him. He picked me up and dropped me onto the bed. He dropped his pants and boxer and climbed onto the bed with me. I unclasped my bra as he’d dropped me and now he knelt over me and pulled my underwear off to my knee and I grabbed them with my toes and tossed them away. 

Damien was exquisite. He bent over me and gave me a hickey on my neck and bit me and ran his nails over my skin. I ran my hands over him, and when I’d had enough of waiting for him, I hooked my leg in his and lifted up to meet him.

I was no virgin, but I might as well have been. There isn’t quite anything like demon dick. And there is nothing like Damien LaVey whispering unspeakable things in your ear as you have the most unforgettable sex of your life. Or lives. He made me feel like a mortal essence.

Omens don’t die of old age. Our energy goes on in body after body forever. I am fairly young as far as Omens go, but I’d been alive since the birth of the Roman Empire. I’d brought ruin to Emperor Nero himself, although he had not known what to make of me. I’d marked the downfall of Genghis Khan and broken men at gambling tables losing their last dimes. As Imelda, I was supposed to have warned an artist who was supposed to be killed in a concert shooting, but I’d blown it off and thousands of people were still alive. I’d gotten tired of bringing nothing but pain. I was Imelda, and I wanted love, not fear. 

Damien made me feel like a mortal thing. I could live forever as Imelda, but the pain and pleasure was as close to the mortal condition as I’d ever felt. And I screamed my wonders to the world around me and I didn’t care who heard. There isn’t anything quite like feeling you might die someday. 

\---

“Aw fuck,” Polly said, and sat back from her window. Scott laughed and laughed, and looked out the window. 

“You owe me! I’m gonna buy so many video games!” Scott said and howled in laughter. On the sidewalk outside their window, Damien and Imelda were kissing. “I told you!”

The bet was finished and money changed hands.


	7. Omens

“My dads want me to go on a ‘diplomatic conference’ with them on earth to try and convince me to come home,” Damien said. He lay in his bed, the sun bathing us in yellow rays. 

“Do you want to go?” I asked. I was nestled up to him, my head on his arm and his arm wrapped around my shoulders. 

“Fuck no,” He said and sighed. “But I think I have to. They said they wanted to come to a compromise.”

“Then, are you going to do it?” I asked.

“I think so. I mean they want to meet at this really nice beach house they have on this tiny Island in the Pacific and they said I could bring a ‘diplomatic entourage’ if it would make me happy,” He said and laughed a little. “When it goes on like this for a while, they tend to get weird about my absence.”

“Maybe they just miss you,” I suggested. Damien laughed.

“No, they’ve always got an angle. First, it was putting off coming home to finish high school in Hell, then it was online school, now I can tell they're ready to compromise,” he said and I laughed. “What’s funny?” 

“You talk about how you know nothing of politics, but you do. You come from a royal family and maybe don’t care about politics as your dads but from your background alone, you know a helluva lot more than I do,” I said and laughed again. “So who's going to be your diplomatic entourage?”

“I don’t think I’m going to bring anyone. My dads are embarrassing,” He said. “Don’t take this as an ‘I don’t want my dads to meet you’ thing, it’s a ‘my dads don’t have verbal filters’ thing.”

“I see where you get it,” I said and Damien poked me in the side. I jumped and poked him in the side back.

“Your not mad I’m not bringing you with?” He asked after a short silence.

“No,” I said and closed my eyes. “I get it. Family is weird.”

“Do you even have a family?” Damien asked and I tensed. He felt it. “Sorry, you just never talk about family. I was just wondering.” 

“I guess I do. I have a sibling, and I know I have parents, but I don’t know them personally,” I said. The words came easier than I thought they would. “Omens don’t have very close families, we have genetic charts we use to make sure we don’t breed with someone who's too close on the family tree. I used it and found my sister Elise, but no. Omens don’t really form families, well not too often anyway. They can when they defect. The chaos oceans aren’t really a place for families.”

“Defect?” Damien asked. “What do you mean by, defect?” 

“Some of us ditch our jobs and live on earth. I am one of them. They send us up and we don’t mark bad luck, we just live. It’s a better life if you find people who don’t give two shits about your monster heritage,” I said and shrugged as best I could. “I’m probably on one of their lists somewhere to track me down, but it isn’t too big of a priority in their books. It’s really just like, ‘if you see this incarnation of Imelda, bring her back to the Chaos Ocean if it doesn’t interfere with your mission’ and what not.”

“What do you mean by Incarnation?” Damien asked and I sighed.

“Every time we finish a mission, we go into a portal to the Chaos Ocean and dissolve into nothingness. We exist only as a metaphysical existence for most of our lives, and only don bodies when we go onto earth. Anything about our appearance can change when we do it, including race and sex. I’m not always Imelda, but I’m always me,” I said and Damien moved and looked down at me.

“Who are you when you're a boy?” He asked.

“I’m Christopher when I’m a boy,” I said and laughed. 

“Huh,” he said and looked up at the ceiling. “I pegged you as being an Andrew.” 

I laughed, vaguely glad he wasn’t too weirded out by my sometimes being a boy.

“If you were a girl, what would you call yourself?” I asked, and Damien squinted up.

“Jennifer,” He said after a long pause.

“It fits,” I said and laughed. Damien squeezed me against him, and I closed my eyes. “Do you really think meeting up with your dads will do any good for your situation?”

“I sure as hell hope so,” Damien said with a sigh.

\---

I: How was the flight?

D: Nothing out of the ordinary.

I: What is the ordinary then?   
I: To be fair to myself I’ve never been on an airplane so

D: I’ll take you on a plane someday.  
D: so they call out your section number and make your board the plane. You sit, the flight attendants tell you about the risks of flying and make sure you know how to operate the emergency exits and so on. Then they have you turn off electronics and then the plane takes off. They flight up really high then tell you you can use your electronics again and can unbuckle to like go to the bathroom and stuff but keep buckled if ur just sitting or whatever. You fly for a while. You land, you get off the plane as fast as you can. The end. 

I: Sounds like a blast.

D: It really isn’t.

I: I was being vaguely sarcastic but texting doesn’t really make for the best platform for that

D: It’s not the worst

I: I suppose not. When are you meeting up with your dads?

D: I’m putting them off by waiting in the taxi to talk to you.

I: You shouldn’t make them wait. Diplomacy such and such. While I’m a big girl who can wait for your reply, they might not be.

D: you’re probably right. You usually are with people anyway.

I: Which is a little strange, knowing my origin story.

D: A little  
D: ok, I’m going to go now. I’ll text you when I can.

I: ok, good luck. You'll do fine. You’ll always have a home on earth.

D: thanks.


	8. Diplomacy

Dante was a lover, not a fighter. Sometimes wondered where Damien had gotten his anger issues, but then Dante didn’t have to look too far, to his husband. Lucifer had always had anger issues, but they’d never been quite as big as their son’s. Dante wondered if Luci had been as angry as Damien before they’d met, but Dante wasn’t that full of himself. Dante knew he could only do so much good for his men without harming them too. He wondered if he’d neglected Damien when he was a boy, instead of encouraging independence. Maybe Dante was the reason Damien never wanted to come home. 

Dante sat with his thoughts and with Lucifer, who didn’t look worried at all. Luci just sat and sipped his beer and looked out onto the ocean. This was one of his favorite places on earth. Dante thought he was a little too enamored with earth, but what was he going to do. It struck him that Damien was more like Lucifer than Dante. Dante had sometimes wondered if Damien was even his son. Dante quickly pushed these thoughts out of his head. They would do him no good. Besides, Damien had his nose, and his skin was the midpoint between Dante and Lucifer. 

“Do you think it’s our fault?” Dante asked quietly, looking out at the ocean. “That he never wants to come home?”

“I think so,” he said and sighed. “Even if we know what’s best for him, there is a wall between us that we need to bridge. And if he won’t just comply, then we’ll have to compromise.”

“What if we don’t know what's best for him?” Dante asked. Lucifer reached over and began rubbing his back. 

“Then we’ll have to talk to him and rethink what's good for our son,” He said and sighed. “And really, he’s an adult now. There really isn’t as much we can do now. I just wish we’d built a bridge when he was younger. The best we can hope for is beginning to make things right. We won’t be getting our little boy back any time soon.”

Dante looked down at his hands. “I know. I just-” Dante swallowed the lump in his throat. “I just want to be back in his life. I miss him so much.”

“I know baby,” Lucifer said and leaned over and half hugged Dante. “I know. I do too.”

 

The sliding door from the house opened, and Dante turned and looked to see Damien. 

“Hey,” He said, staying in the doorway. He had a backpack on and held a black duffle bag in one hand. Damien looked different. His hair was the same and his eyes were the same, but his cheeks were thinner and he wasn’t smiling. The look of utter indifference staked Dante through the heart.

“Hello Damien,” Lucifer said and smiled. Both men stood up walked toward Damien, who shook his head gently when they got too close. 

“Have you been eating?” Dante blurted out. “You look thinner than before.”

“I’m a poor college kid with a meal plan that only works twice a day only on weekdays,” He said and shrugged. “I’m not starving, but it’s less I guess. I’ve gotten pretty good at stealing from the dining hall anyway.”

“Are you hungry?” Dante asked and Damien shook his head. 

“I ate on the plane,” He said.

“Well, there are snacks in the pantry and leftover chili in the fridge,” Dante said. “And there’s a new pizza place on the public half of the island.”

“I’ll be ok. Where should I put my stuff?” He asked. 

“The couch,” Lucifer said and Damien nodded. He turned and walked inside. Dante began to follow, but Lucifer put a hand on his shoulder and stopped him. 

“We can’t smother him,” Luci said and Dante’s shoulders fell. 

“I know,” Dante said and perked back up. “I’m going to get a drink from the kitchen.”

“Can you get me another beer?” Luci asked and Dante looked over disapprovingly.

“I really think you shouldn’t be drunk for this,” Dante said and Lucifer rolled his eyes. 

“I won’t get drunk, it’s just two beers,” He grumbled, “Besides, it’s the light earther stuff. I couldn’t get truly drunk on it if I drank two kegs.”

“Fine, just promise me you will stop drinking if you feel yourself getting drunk,” Dante said, and Luci smiled graciously.

“Ok, I’ll stop drinking if I feel myself get drunk,” Lucifer said and Dante smiled. 

“Thank you,” He said and walked back inside. He walked to the fridge, pulled out a beer for Luci and a craft cream soda for himself. He walked back towards the door when Damian was walking down the stairs. Damien had changed into a loose faded tank top and jeans. Their eyes met and Damien looked at what was in his hands.

“Can I have one of those?” He pointed to the drinks in his hands.

“Which, a beer or the soda?” Dante asked.

“A beer,” Damien said, and Dante’s dad instinct started going off like crazy.

“I would be inclined to say no, but I’ll ask Luci,” He said and walked outside.

“Damien wants a beer,” Dante said.

“He’s of age,” Luci said. “As long as he doesn’t drink too much, I think It will be ok.”

“You can have a beer,” Dante said to Damien who was standing in the kitchen. “They're in the fridge."

Damien pulled open the fridge and grabbed a bottle. He found the bottle opener and popped it open and followed Dante outside. Dante took his former spot, and Damien leaned against the white wooden railing on the outside, facing down the beach, the ocean to his side.

“How’s school going?” Lucifer asked. “What are you doing for work? I assume you’re working.”

“School’s fine. I’ve been working at a club as a-” Damien paused. “I’ve been bartending.”

Something about Damien’s story was a lie, but Dante pretended not to have noticed. 

“I hope you're not drinking too much,” Dante said, and Damien raised an eyebrow. 

“I don’t drink on the job if that’s what you’re asking. I would like it better if you guys just asked questions instead of saying them like statements. Its annoying as Hell,” Damien responded bluntly. “And besides, I’ll drink as much as I like.”

Dante pursed his lips and Lucifer didn’t even try to suppress his laugh. Dante glowered but was happy to see Damien smirk. 

“Moving on,” Lucifer asked. “How are your friends? Are you seeing anyone?”

“My friends are fine. I’m-” again, Damien paused. “I’m not really seeing anyone.” 

Again, Dante sensed the lie but didn’t say anything. “Are you still friends with Scott? I like that guy, he feels like a better influence on you than some of the others,” Dante said and Luci cut him a look.

“I live with Scott. Polly is still around, and I see Liam and his boyfriend occasionally. They’re going to college about 40 miles away from my school,” He said and looked out toward the ocean. “Some others from school are still around but I’m not really close with them. The witch coven lives a few doors away in my apartment building but they’re really not my friends,”

“Any new friends?” Luci asked and Damien smiled a little.

“A few. This guy Jason I work with, and this girl in my freshman comp class,” He said. “Imelda.”

“What does Jason do at the bar?” Dante asked.

“Oh, he-” Damien prepared to lie again. “He dresses the drag queens. Does their hair and makeup and stuff. He’s pretty good at it. He’s a shapeshifter.”

“And Imelda?” Dante asked.

“She’s a smart girl. She’s Polly’s roommate. Horrible taste in movies, but she’s fun to beat at video games. She’s an Omen,” Damien said and eyed his dads. “Don’t say anything about that last part. She’s great and I won’t stick around to hear you say anything bad about her.”

“Ok,” Lucifer said and put up his hand a little. Damien took a sip of his beer and looked out at the ocean. Dante sighed.

“So, how’s Beelzebub?” Damien asked. 

“She’s fine. She gave birth to her kittens about a month ago,” Dante said and smiled. “Do you miss her?”

“A little,” he said and sighed. “Ok, now that we’ve asked some personal questions let's get this over with.”

“If you so wish,” Lucifer said and sat forward. “Let’s get down to business.”

\---

Lucifer always had to get up in the night. Sometimes to get water, sometimes he had to pee, and sometimes he just needed to walk around and clear his head. Tonight was no different. Having his son back under his roof made him happier than he let on, even if the circumstances were less than amazing. Dante had jostled him awake moving in his sleep, and Lucifer had been startled awake. Even after figuring out what happened, Lucifer couldn’t get back to sleep. 

Lucifer got out of bed quietly and exited their bedroom. He crept down the stairs and passed Damien, who was sleeping on the folded out couch. Lucifer had been pissed when Damien had defaced his horns by breaking one off, but he’d come to realize he couldn’t fault him. It really was easier to sleep with only one horn. Lucifer moved passed his son into the kitchen and quietly grabbed a beer from the fridge. He crept past Damien once again and slipped out onto the deck. 

He drank his beer in the moonlight and sat with his thoughts. The lies Dante had detected in Damien’s answers hadn't seemed too bad. He’d sensed a lot of truth in the things Damien had shared, along with the lies. However he lived, he hoped his son was happy. 

Lucifer tensed for no reason, and then the sliding door opened. 

“Dad?” Damien whispered. “Can I join you?” 

“Sure,” Lucifer said, and Damien came and sat next to him. “Have you slept?”

“Some,” he said. “It’s hard for me to sleep in new places, even if I’ve slept on that couch before.”

“It really has been a while since you were here. Did I wake you?” Lucifer asked.

“No, I was already awake,” Damien said. “Look, I told some lies when I was telling you about how I was doing and such. So I’m going to tell you some more stuff now.”

“Ok,” Lucifer said and watched his son. Damien sighed and looked out onto the ocean. He seemed a lot calmer than before. College must be good for him.

“I’ll tell Dante in the morning, but for now-” He paused and sighed. “First, Jason isn’t the one who works with the drag queens. I do that. I’m pretty good at it too. Jason is the bartender.”

“Ok, and you enjoy doing that?” Lucifer asked and Damien nodded. 

“I enjoy it quite a bit. Second, Imelda is my girlfriend. We’ve been together for about a month,” Damien continued. “She is a truant Omen and doesn’t plan on going back to the Chaos Oceans anytime soon. I- I kind of like her. A lot. She’s the coolest person I’ve ever been with and I don’t know how I’d react to a split or whatever.”

“What’s she like?” Lucifer asked. Damien smiled in a far off way.

“She’s got black hair and green eyes. Bright green, the omen mark or whatever. She’s a little shorter than me and she’s got a small chin and is absolutely beautiful. She’s just as sarcastic as me but she doesn’t like getting pushed around. When she’s pissed at me, she doesn’t say ‘i am fine’ and stay mad or anything. She tells what I did wrong and makes me right my mistake or she goes and stays with Polly until I fix what I’ve done. She’s studying English Writing and Literature. She’s so smart, sometimes I feel like a dumbass when I talk to her about stuff she knows about. And she is good about apologizing when she fucks up too. It isn’t one-sided,” Damien rambled. Lucifer smiled at how happy his son sounded.

“She sounds nice. Why didn’t you bring her with you?” Lucifer asked and Damien froze. 

“Well, I didn’t know if I was ready for that yet. She understood,” He said and shrugged. “She doesn't really have a family but for her sister, but whatever.”

“That's good,” Lucifer said and paused. “I hope I can meet her one day.”

“Maybe,” Damien said. “As I said, we’ve only been together a month. Things could go south, I guess. Anyway, I have one last thing.”

“Ok, shoot,” Lucifer said and smiled.

“I did some reading. I bought a copy of Hell’s law books. I’ve been studying them pretty closely,” Damien said and Lucifer smiled broadly.

“I’m glad you're finally taking interest in our kingdom. I’m proud of you,” he said and smiled. Damien smiled uncomfortably.

“I’m about to make you wish you didn’t say that,” Damien said and Lucifer stopped smiling.

“Why?” Lucifer asked.

“Like I said. I’ve been reading it closely. I found a part about- I know how to abdicate in the eyes of the kingdom. Even if you guys somehow make me king, I can quit. I can hand off the crown the second it’s put on my head. And now I know how,” Damien said, not taking his eyes off his dad’s face. Lucifer’s face fell. 

Anger twisted his face, and Lucifer stood up.

“Dad?” Damien asked, fear registering on his face, an unusual sight.

Lucifer turned away and walked to the door.

“Dad, wait-” Damien said. Lucifer opened the door, walked inside and closed it hard. He made sure it wasn't locked and went upstairs and to bed. 

Damien sat on the deck, not moving. His shoulders fell and he tilted his head toward the sky, a lump building in his throat. Damien sat forward and rubbed his face. He sat with his face in his hands and his elbows on his knees for what felt like forever and pulled his phone out of his pocket.

D: I told one of my dads. He didn’t take it well.

I: <3 it will be alright in the end.

D: I love you

…

I: I love you too.


	9. Loss

He’d said that he loved me. He’d said it. I’d been happy, then confused, then worried, then I’d remembered to say it back. It was almost two in the morning, and Damien had told me he loved me, and I told him that I loved him. I even meant it. How often had I told people I wasn’t in love with that I loved them? It hadn’t been often but it had happened. 

I took a screenshot of his texts and fell asleep with them on my phone’s screen. I felt over the moon. I wondered if Damien was alright. I was so happy. I worried his dads might hurt him because he wanted to abdicate. I hugged my blankets to me and muffled a scream of Joy in them. I was worried. I was overjoyed.

I woke up the next day and texted him. He texted me back that he was fine. He sent me a picture of with himself and his dads eating breakfast with the Pacific ocean in the background. He named them for me, Dante and Lucifer. They called each other Luci and Don as pet names. Lucifer was pissed about the abdication but Dante was more excited he had a girlfriend. Damien told me that Dante would be pissed once the novelty of me wore off, add Lucifer would be happy about my existence once he was done being angry.

Damien flew home a few days later. I met him at the airport and greeted him with a kiss when he came up to me near the luggage carousel. He told me about the island, the ocean, them letting him drink beer to try and make him happy, and about their compromises. He also told me about how angry they’d been at his threat of abdication. He’d eavesdropped on them discussing it. Lucifer had wanted to cut Damien off, but Dante had flat out told him that He would give up the title of King to be with his son if Lucifer tried anything of the sort. 

Damien explained the compromise to me. He would go to Hell every weekend but need not stay the night if he didn’t want to. He would spend holidays in Hell, and in exchange, they would help him pay for college and rent. They still hadn’t totally broached the topic of his abdication.

And forth from that screenshot poured the declarations of love. It took a while for him to say it verbally, but he did eventually. It was magical. Two months, and I was happier than I’d ever been. 

I loved him. And he loved me. And that’s it all fell apart.

…

I: Something is happening.   
I: Someone's in the apartment

D: what? I’m OMW  
D: What room are you in

I: your bedroom, I locked the door. 

D: I have a gun in the top drawer of my dresser. It’s already loaded. Point it at the sky until you know its a bad guy.

I: ok

D: are you ok? What's going on now?

 

I: I found the gun. Whoever it is is in the kitchen. Their rustling in the trash I think. Do you know where Scott is?

D: He’s spending the weekend with his pack. Did you call the cops?

I: no, I’m afraid of making any noise.

D: Call them anyway.

I : Ok

… 

I: I think he heard me or something.  
I: I called the cops their on their way but he’s at the door.   
I: I love you

D: I love you too, I’m almost there. Don’t shoot unless it’s necessary.

I: Damien I love you so fucking much it hurts

D: I love you too, what's going on now??  
D: Imelda!?  
D:Oh fuck  
D: Imelda I love you  
D: I love you

…

D: Imelda?


	10. Pain & Fear

“Damien, you have some visitors,” Lucifer said. He looked into Damien’s room. Damien sat in his desk chair reading something written on a piece of paper.

“Who?” Damien asked and folded the piece of paper up and put it in his pocket. Damien’s voice was ragged, and he didn’t seem to see his father.

“Polly, Scott, Liam, and Oz. They want to see you,” Lucifer said. “And here, you’ve got mail.”

Damien took the letters from his dad and looked at them with disinterest. “Tell them to go away.”

“No,” Lucifer said and frowned. Damien looked up at him and scowled. 

“I don’t want to see them. Turn them away, tell them I’m sick. I don’t care how you do it, I just don't want to see them,” He said, his face burning.

“No. You owe them an explanation. They said they thought you might be dead, not answering texts, shit like that. Now, I’m going to shut this door, you're going to get your shit together, and I’m going to bring you your friends,” Lucifer said and Damien’s scowl deepened.

“Fuck off,” he spat.

“Once your friends are in your room, I will gladly,” Lucifer said and walked back to the main hall. The small group of college kids standing in the middle of the room talking to Dante seemed so out of place Lucifer might have laughed if the circumstances weren’t quite so awful.

“He will see you, but fair warning, he’s not in a good place. He’s pretty upset,” Lucifer said and beckoned the group after him. As he lead them, no one spoke. “You should also know he didn’t want to see you, but I think it will be good for him to see his friends.”

Once the group got to Damien’s door, Lucifer knocked and opened the door a crack, and walked away. 

“Damien?” Scott said quietly and pushed the door open a little more. Damien sat at his desk, not looking at them. The room was messy. There were dirty clothes all over the floor and dirty plates had been piled on any clear surfaces. It smelled bad and Damien was more unkempt than anyone had ever seen him.

“Hey man,” Polly said and walked over to him. 

“Don’t touch me,” Damien said quietly as Polly reached a handout, and then dropped it. 

“So, how’ve you been?” Oz asked and stepped into the room with everyone else. Damien turned his head and looked at Oz.

“Take a wild fucking guess,” Damien spat, looking at them straight on for the first time in months. 

“Why haven't you been texting us back?” Liam asked. 

“We thought you were dead,” Polly said.

“I might as well be,” Damien mumbled and put his head down on his desk, the only clean part of his room.

“Don’t say that,” Scott said and pushed to the front of the group. He set a box down next to his head. 

“What’s that?” Damien asked, indicating the box with his eyes only. 

“It’s-” Scott said and looked over at Polly, who stepped forward again.

“It’s some of her stuff. Stuff we thought you might like to have,” Polly said, and pulled a plastic bag from her back pocket. “And I brought you some pot because I thought you might like to have it.” 

Damien took the weed from her and looked at it like it was an object from an Alien planet, and a small smile spread over his face. 

“Thanks,” He said quietly. Scott beckoned for Polly to hand him something from her bag and she did. He handed Damien a green tennis ball with a red bow tied to it. 

“I know this won’t have the same meaning to you because your not a werewolf, but I thought it might make YOU happy because new tennis balls always make ME happy and so…” Scott trailed off as he watched Damien looking at it. Another smile.

Liam stepped forward and brought a book from out behind his back. “This is a book by Dr. David Quinton Malone. He’s a psychologist who studies how grief affects the brains of different species of monsters. It's got some really interesting stuff in it about losing loved ones. And-” Liam paused and pulled another bag of weed out of his pocket. “I also got you some pot because I know you like pot and don’t really like reading.” 

Everyone looked at Oz, who stepped forward and handed him an envelope. “I know it will be hard to beat two bags of weed, a tennis ball, and a book about grief, but I did my best,” Oz said.

Inside the envelope was a $50 steam gift card and a redeemable code for a premium porn account. Liam sighed when he saw the porn code and looked away. Damien smiled again.

“Thanks, guys,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. He suddenly looked away, his jaw tense. Polly stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him. Damien began to shake, and his breaths came faster and less coordinated. He began to cry, and each of his friends hugged him. Once he’d stabilized a little, they let go of him. He looked down at his hands in his lap and fiddled with a ring one of his pinkies.

“I feel really screwed up. I miss her a lot. I feel like I lost a part of myself and- GOD THAT IS SO FUCKING CHEESY BUT I HAVE No other way of saying it,” He said and looked up. “Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck! I have to get out of here. Let's go,” He stood up from his chair and ran his fingers through his hair. 

“Let's go!” He repeated and stormed out of his room. All of his friends followed. 

\---

I am afraid. I don’t know where I am- or even who I am. It’s dark. 

Suddenly, I breathe. I take my first breath and I see. My eyes had been closes, that was why it had been so dark. I am in some sort of clearing. There is snow. The air is clean and I am safe. 

Suddenly, a man hovers into my field of view.

“Hello!” he says happily. I smile. I like this man. He looks so happy. “You’ve just been born! To communicate, move your vocal cords! Just like that, good job! Your name is SavannahDamon!” 

SavannahDamon? No, that can’t be right. Where am I? I need to be somewhere. I need to get back there, someone is waiting for me.

The Happy man’s face fades away and the snowy scene before me fades to black. The happy man says, “It didn’t work, let's try again. And this time try SavannahOwen. Damon is too close to- you know.”

Lights, colors, sounds, smells. Everything is assaulting my senses. I am scared. Where am I? Who am I?

A snowy scene presents itself. A smiling, happy looking but unfamiliar man drifts into view.

“Hello, you’ve just been born! You can communicate by pushing air through your vocal cords! Good, just like that! Your name Is SavannahOwen,” the happy man says.

My name is SavannahOwen. 

“Good job! I am going to give you knowledge of our people!” the happy man says, and puts two fingers to my temple. My brain implodes and suddenly I know everything about being an Omen. 

“Welcome to the world! Now, what do you think of truancy?” He asked, frowning comically at me.

Truancy is evil. People who desert our cause are evil. I will never desert.

“Good! It’s time to go to work!”


	11. Out Of My Head

Hell was warm, but I was cold. 

I was so confused. 

One minute I’d known exactly what I was doing. I was looking for a demon named Damien LaVey, the next- the next minute I was- stunned. 

He was staring at me. Disheveled boy. Important. Mission. Owen, wake up. He had asked if I was someone called Imelda.

“No, I am not called Imelda, I am called Owen,” I responded. Yes, that seemed to be the right thing to say, except Damien LaVey drooped. He and four others were standing in a garden outside the Palace of the Inferno.

“Do you know her at all?” He asked a little. I shook my head. I looked back towards the road where I’d come from. I felt compelled to get out of there, but I didn’t know how. Where was I again?

“Do you know anything about what happens to Omens when they go truant?” the girl next to him asked me. I blinked at her.

“They have their minds reset and are taught how to be an Omen better than their original teaching,” I responded. 

“Then how do you know you-” She started but I held up my hand. 

“I must leave,” I said, and I opened a portal and jumped up and in. The last thing I saw was the face of the sad boy.

\---

Once Damien was alone again, Damien locked his door and started going through the box of Imelda’s stuff that his friends had left for him. Before he started going through her stuff, he thanked the heavens for his friends and smoked some of the pot they’d left for him. He wanted to be a little out of his head to start going through her stuff. 

He reached into the box without really looking and pulled out a ball with some sharpie on it. He recognized his own handwriting on it, COLF. he couldn’t help but smile. Horrible movie, good night.

He pulled out photos of himself and her, photos of the friend group, notes they’d passed in freshman comp. It felt like an eternity ago. Damien was no longer enrolled in college, but he still had the credits from his completed first semester classes. At least he could get them back eventually. 

In reality, he knew he would never re-enroll. Damien didn’t expect to leave Hell again, at least not for quite a long time. He didn’t know when he’d leave the castle grounds next. He guessed it would be a while for that one too. But, even knowing his life wasn’t moving forward, he felt better. Not happy, no, but not so depressed. No, he felt better. Probably better than he’d ever felt, post-Imelda. Maybe Damien could even make a life in Hell. History is full of bad kings, and Damien was sure he could at least be a mediocre one. 

Damien sat back from his desk and just looked at the photos of them together, the notes they’d passed, and slowly got higher. Even once the joint was out, he just sat there, trying to piece Imelda back together from his memories. Their first meeting, first kiss, first fuck, first I love you. The first time he’d thought about forever with her. 

It had been a bad day at first. He’d been so fucking angry at everything that had been happening, but Imelda had been patient. He felt like nothing was going well. He’d sat down on the couch with Imelda, who immediately gauged his mood and lay her head on his shoulder. She’d said that his feelings were real and that he would be better soon. He’d put his arm around her and she’d snuggled up to him. They’d turned on reruns of Family Guy and watched together until it was time for dinner when She’d ordered a pizza, just the way he liked it. Classic pepperoni with black olives and onions. 

Damien put out the joint and just kept right on remembering.

\---

There had been so much pain. More pain that I had ever felt, and it wasn’t just physical. It would have been too little if they'd only tortured my body. It was the brain stuff that really fucked me over.

KeithOlivia had really only been Keith when he’d gotten me. When we passed through the portal and into the Chaos Ocean, they’d become KeithOlivia. He’d transported me to a cell that floated, disconnected from anything else. There was only black water outside the bars of the cell. Then the first torture began.

They thought I might be more receptive to physical pain because of how long I’d been with this particular body. The physical pain did not make me break. What broke me was the next torture.

After who knows how long, they stopped hurting me. The one acting as my torturer was ordered via headset that it was time to move on. The cell’s walls melted around me and I was reduced to my consciousness. I was chained to the ceiling of Damien’s bedroom in an invisible form. I watched as he questioned the police about my whereabouts, I watched him watch the video of my last moments in his life, and I watched him break.

I watched him run. He ran from the scene of my kidnapping and my chain followed. One thing the lore about reconditioning an Omen mind that people get wrong most often- the omen has to consent to it first. They can’t just play a video in my face and have me be a new person- they have to break you to make you another person. 

I watched Damien. He didn’t physically show it until he stopped moving. He ran past my dorm with Polly. He ran past the movie theater where we’d seen that awful show. He ran past the bar he worked at, past the edge of town until he got to an old dirt road we’d never seen together. He stopped running and started walking, his face still blank. 

He walked down the dirt road and turned down a path through tall oak trees. It was winter, but the small amount of snow on the ground didn’t bother him. He walked down the trail for a long time, until he reached the end. The end of the trail was marked by a cliff, and for a horrible moment I thought he would jump off, but he didn’t. He turned left at the cliff’s edge and walked for a while longer until he came to a rocky outcropping over the cliff. He walked up to it and edged around the rock, and for a moment, he passed out of sight. I quickly moved and saw him again.

Under the rocky outcropping, he sat. He was sheltered from snow and wind and had a beautiful view of the Pacific ocean. That is when he fell apart.

His face contorted as if he was realizing only then. I tried to put my had on his but I had no hands. I wanted to scream, tell him I was ok, It would all be ok, but I had no voice. They’d taken my ability to comfort, and made me watch the man I love break.

Enough was enough. There was no escape from this hell. I followed him for days, weeks, months maybe. I watched him get worse every day until it was too much. I closed my eyes on Damien and let go. It was enough.

And then everything was gone.


	12. Witchy

“Being a ruler is about doing good for your people and further the life you can bring them,” Lucifer said to his son in anger. “And you’re still not listening!”

“Fuck, I need a break,” Damien said and sat back. It had been about 10 months since Imelda had vanished, and Damien had decided to give being king a chance. He’d sat in on his father’s meetings with advisors, he’d studied textbooks for god's sake, and still. Still, the idea of ruling Hell made him want to deck himself. In the face. With a very large knife. 

“Yeah, me too,” Lucifer said and rubbed his face. “I’m sorry I yelled. I- ugh. Let's be done for the day.” 

“I second that,” Damien said and shut the textbook. He put it in his backpack and went back to his room and stowed the bag. He paused at his desk and looked at the photos above his laptop. Imelda in most of them, but a lot of them were his friends too. The only one who didn’t come to visit him regularly was Vera because she’d been busy with work.

Damien had dreamed about her last night. He dreamed about Imelda fairly often, but last night had been different. For one, it was clearer than most of his dreams. Two, it wasn’t sad. He’d dreamed that she told him it was ok. All of it, and so Damien had felt better. Starting about a month ago, Damien hadn’t been as depressed all the time. While he was still sad, he felt like he had a little more control over his life. He felt better.

\---

I breathed, and the world came into focus. I was free. There was no Omen handler behind me today, I finally had the privacy to do what I needed to do.

I was back at the college town, but I had no intention of going to class. Oh no, I wasn't really ready for that yet. I had to set up some precautions first before becoming Truant. Again. 

I climbed the familiar stairs up to the second floor. I passed the doorway that called to me and walked two doors further and knocked. The Coven, yes, witches. If anyone could help me figure out who I really was, it would be a group of witches. A short girl with a dumb haircut opened the door, and her eyes grew wide. She spoke some words in an ancient tongue to ward off evil spirits, and when her words didn’t affect me, she spoke.

“You scared the hell out of me, what do you want?” She asked and I smiled. I’d come to the right place. 

“I have lost my memory. I need a spell or something to regain my former self,” I said. “What is your name?” 

“My name? Hope. You seem familiar. What is your name?” Hope asked and I smiled.

“SavannahOwen, but I was once called Imelda, I think I was once your neighbor, two doors that way,” I said, and pointed. Hope’s mouth dropped open, and she smiled.

“Holy shit man, everyone thinks your dead!” She exclaimed and turned inside her apartment. “JOY! FAITH!” 

Two figures, a tall dark girl with white hair, and a curvy pale girl with purple hair emerged from different doors. When they saw me, they both whispered the same word to ward off maleficent spirits. When I did not leave, they approached. 

“What is it?” The taller of the two asked. 

“This is Imelda in her newest form,” Hope said, gleeful at the words she chose. Both girl’s eyes widened and I was invited inside. The apartment was small. Only one bedroom seemed to be in use, although there was another room. The layout of the rooms seemed familiar, and I was drawn to the second, unused bedroom. I walked to the open doorway and looked inside. I looked up to the ceiling. There was no hole in the ceiling or wall, where I expected them to be.

“What are you looking at?” The leader, Joy, asked. 

“I-” I stopped. “I was expecting to find- Never mind.” 

I turned back to them and they invited me to the couch. From the body language of the three women, I guessed that they were in a polyamorous relationship. Or just ‘good friends’ in a way most people aren’t good friends. 

“So, what can we do for you?” Joy asked. “And what should we call you?” 

“Savannah, for now,” I said and cleared my throat. “I want my old memories back. I have odd glimpses of a past life. People and places I can’t name, but I know- I know there is someone who needs me. Or needed me. I know- I just have to know the whole story. I don’t want someone to hurt because of me.”

“Do you think…?” Faith asked and looked to Joy, who shook her head the slightest bit. My heart started to pound in my chest. 

“What?” I asked, feeling betrayed. “What were you going to say? Please, I need help I don’t have any money right now but I will eventually. I’ll owe you one.”

“Stop that,” Joy said and looked at me sadly. “I only meant, we're going to try and get your memory back, but we're not going to tell you about the people you knew. You need to figure that out on your own. Some of the people you hung out with were appalling, but whatever. Just know it might not work on the first try.”

“Or at all,” added Hope. “We’ve never done magic on an Omen. Your energy might be incompatible with our powers.”

I sighed. “I am willing to accept these terms and conditions.” Hope giggled at my strange choice of words.

“Then let's begin,” Joy said and grinned.

\---

“We’ll have to try again,” hope said after making me drink a disgusting tea to ‘refresh my energies.’ I sighed. We’d tried four times already, with different spells and different languages. “Fifth time’s the charm, right?” 

I laughed. I was tired, but I still had a little hope. Both figuratively and in the sense that the short girl who’d made me tea was named Hope. “I hope so.” 

This time, they wanted to do a potion and spell combination. They gave me a few hours to sleep, and at three in the morning, Faith woke me up. 

“The potion is ready. Are you?” She said and I nodded. 

I redressed and we went back out to their main spell room. Prepared in the spot where the coffee table had been was a circle with strange patterns drawn in it. Faith indicated I was to sit in the middle of the circle and close my eyes. Joy painted some marks on my face. 

“Fair warning, this one is going to be a little more dangerous than the others. But if the potion kills you, it proves that you really aren’t Imelda,” Joy said and I nodded. “You still want to go ahead?”

“I’ve told no lies to you, and I don’t intend to ever,” I replied, my eyes still closed.

“Ok, let's go,” She said, and I opened my mouth and Joy slowly poured the potion into my mouth. It was warm and smelled cloyingly sweet, but it didn’t taste like anything special. 

The three women began chanting something in another language. Suddenly my head hurt and my eyes felt like they were being pressed out of my head from behind. My throat tightened and I gasped for air. My lungs emptied and I fell to the floor, gasping. The air didn’t seem like it was getting to my lungs. The edges of my vision went blurry and then got dark. All the colors were off and my heart was beating faster than was probably healthy. 

I reached up and clawed at my throat, and suddenly I was seeing Damien for the first time. I’d touched my throat to itch my necklace as I’d looked up to scare him. I was a child. I was in ancient Rome, exploring the streets and interacting with the mortals in their language. I was in Mongolia, traveling with Genghis Khan before I had to warn him of his fate. I was in Denmark, preminizing the fate of a King. I was in the western United States, deciding to be truant. I was exploring the world through the eyes of a free woman. I was kissing beautiful people and wearing beautiful things. I was learning to drive and to cook. I was enrolling in college and making friends. I was a child. And I was a fraud. I was Imelda.

I gasped and the air flooded into my lungs and I half expected to see the happy man there to tell me I was born again and that my name was SavannahOwen. But it wasn’t. It was ImeldaChristopher, and I remembered everything.

I sat up and rubbed my face, smearing the paint around. 

“How do you feel?” Joy asked.

“I’ve had better days,” I said and smiled. “Thank you all so much. Is there anything I can do to pay you back?”

“No no, you don’t have to-” Faith started, but Hope cut in.

“We love shopping at Willamina’s Witchcraft. They’ve got fancy gift cards if that’s something you’d be up for,” Hope suggested and smiled. “So, you remember? Everything?”

“I think so,” I said and smiled. “I need to get to find Damien. Do you guys know a mystic?”

“There’s one in the indoor pool on Fifth. It’s dummy labeled and impossible to miss once your inside,” Joy said. “Are you sure it’s such a good idea for you to go find him now? What if he doesn’t recognize you?”

“Oh,” I said and I dropped the smile. I exhaled quickly and pursed my lips. “What do you think I should do about it?”

“Maybe we can reset you to your old appearance,” Faith suggested. “There's some stuff about that in Ode’s 12th edition I think.” 

“Well, that would be nice,” I said and looked in one of the fancy mirrors they so conveniently had hanging on the wall. “I don’t exactly look like Imelda anymore.”

Faith grinned and put her hands together. “Let's get to work.”


	13. Home

I breathed hard. I was staring at the door to my old dorm room, hoping Polly hadn’t sold all my stuff while I was ‘dead.’

I couldn’t put my hand to the door. I was afraid and I didn’t know how she would react. Improvisation had never been my strong suit, even when they’d tried to make me SavannahOwen. 

I closed my eyes and breathed. As if it had a mind of its own, I raised my hand and knocked on the door. The sounds of someone standing up from sitting on the bed permeated the air around my head, and I stepped back from the door, a sinking feeling deep within my stomach. Polly was the first of my friends I planned to notify of my being alive, but I still didn’t know how she would react to my presence.

The door swung open, and Polly’s eyes widened. 

“Oh my god,” She whispered, and blue tears sprang to her eyes. “Imelda, you’re alive!”

I smiled. “I was never dead. But we can get to that later. I need your help,” I said and sighed. “It’s a long ass story, but you will hear it. I just- I just need to find Damien.”

Polly nodded, and sprang forward and bear hugged me. “I’ve missed you so much.”

“I’ve missed you too,” I whispered, and hugged her harder than I’ve ever hugged anyone. “Once I get everyone up to speed about my past situation, I’m going to pay for everyone to come on a vacation or something fun like that. Well, probably not a vacation, but something. Did you get a new roommate?” 

“Nah, the admins were afraid I’d throw a fit if I got a replacement so quick after a friend’s death. I’ve been drawing out the time I get privacy by acting more distraught than I am currently,” Polly said and smiled. “That isn’t to say I wasn’t all fucked up about it for a long time, but you know how grief goes.”

The air between us hung now. She’d addressed it and I was now acutely aware of the pain I’d caused. I looked down at my shoes and stuck my hands in my pockets. 

“I promise, I’ll make all of this right. I just need to explain to Damien first, will you help me?” I asked and Polly jokingly pushed me a little.

“Of course dummy. I wouldn’t send one of my best friends to Hell on her own,” Polly said, and took my hand and pulled me inside the dorm. Polly hadn’t sold any of my stuff, but a lot of my photos on my photo board were gone. I searched my stuff for the Colf ball, but I couldn’t find it.

“Did Damien go through my stuff?” I asked and Polly shook her head. 

“I did. Damien wasn’t answering texts or anything, so we called his dads and found out- he really wasn’t in a good place. He didn’t leave his room a lot. Anyway, I took some of your guy’s keepsakes and brought them to him. The photos, some notes, something you were writing for him, and the golf ball, with Colf written on it,” Polly rattled off and I nodded. 

“Ok. Wait, something I was writing?” I asked, and Polly nodded. 

“It was half ripped out of your notebook and was missing a page,” Polly said and looked embarrassed. “Like, everything you loved about him. I know it’s private and I shouldn’t have read any of it, but I thought- I thought it might help him. Sorry.”

“It’s ok,” I said, remembering the paper. “It was missing a page?”

“Yeah. Part of it was ripped out. I don’t know why,” Polly said. “Maybe Damien did go through your stuff. He was fiddling with a piece of lined paper when we went to see him after he’d stopped responding to texts and stuff.”

“Who all went to see him?” I asked, going through my dresser to find something new to wear. Something I hadn’t escaped the Chaos Ocean in. Something comfortable.

“Me, Scott, and Liam and Oz made the trip too,” Polly said as I changed clothes. “We brought him stuff to make him feel better too. Scott brought him a tennis ball, I brought him pot, Liam brought him a book on Grief and also some pot, and Oz got him a porn code and a steam gift card.”

“Sounds like he was well taken care of,” I said and smiled. “Thanks for going to help him when I- uh, couldn’t.”

“No problem boo,” She said and smiled. “Besides, he’s our friend too.” 

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I’m glad he had people.” 

“Yeah, me too,” Polly said.  
\---

Dante had a weird feeling in his chest. The way the girls who’d come to see Damien had looked. Polly was smiling broadly but also looked nervous. The other girl had smiled shyly, but she’d looked downright terrified when she thought Dante wasn’t looking at her.

Dante knocked on the door to Damien’s room. “Damien, you have some visitors,” Dante said through the door. There was no answer. Dante knocked again, and again, there was no answer.

Dante cracked the door open and peeked inside. He liked to give Damien his privacy, ever since his friend had given him the premium porn code. Nothing had happened yet, but Dante was not going to take that chance.

Dante opened the door a little more and caught sight of his son at his desk with his headphones on. He could hear a whisper of sound from the headphones, and his son was bobbing his head back and forth to the song. No wonder he hadn’t heard him, the knocking had probably blended in with the song. Dante walked forward and tapped Damien on the shoulder. Damien jumped and ripped his headphones off and spun around.

“Shit dad,” Damien said. “You startled me.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t listen to your songs so loud then,” Dante said and raised his eyebrows. “You have some visitors, Polly and some girl I don’t know.”

“Oh ok,” Damien put his headphones down and paused his music and stood up from his desk. He began to move out the door but turned and grabbed a pink hoodie from a pile of his stuff. “Polly left this here last time, I might as well give it back now.”

Damien and Dante walked together through the halls of the palace. They exited the hallway and walked toward the grand hall.

“Polly, you left your hoodie-” Damien stopped mid-sentence and mid-stride when he layed eyes on the two women standing together in the hall.

Dante watched as the pink hoodie dropped from his frozen son’s hands. Damien’s face was frozen in a look of utter shock. 

The girl who Dante didn’t know approached him slowly.

“Damien?” She whispered. She had short black hair and piercing green eyes and a small chin. Her eyes were so green, Dante wondered what lucky trick of genetics her parents had played. Then her appearance struck Dante as familiar.

“What is your name?” Dante asked, watching the girl’s face closely. She turned her head to him and smiled shyly again.

“My name is Imelda, and I was- I was dead for a while,” She said and smiled nervously, and looked back to Damien, who’d put his hands down. Suddenly, Damien was running.

\---

His arms around me felt like nothing in this world. He’d begun to breathe again, at least. I closed my eyes and pushed my face into his shirt and he was shaking. Damien LaVey was shaking. The only time I’d ever seen him cry was when he thought I was dead. This was the second time. He clung to me and I clung to him. I never wanted to let go. 

After some time, Polly cleared her throat. I mentally nodded and gently pulled away from Damien, who held onto my wrists and looked me over.

“You have quite a bit of explaining to do,” Damien said quietly, his voice shaking. I nodded and smiled.

“I know. And everything will be explained,” I replied and paused, not knowing what to say next. Polly cleared her throat again and I looked at her.

“I’m going to wander off in Hell, give you two some time, I’ll text you if anything happens to me,” Polly said and I nodded.

“Stay safe. Don’t take gifts from the hobos, they want to act like you stole the thing from them to get you in trouble, And stay away from the edges, ok?” Damien asked and Polly nodded.

“I’ll be ok. I’ll see you later,” She said and turned and left. Damien glanced at his dad, who’d watched Polly go.

“Nice to meet you, Imelda, was it? Well, I’ll make myself scarce, dinner is at 6,” Dante said and exited. Alone in the grand hall, I just looked at Damien, who just looked at me.

“This room is really echoey, let's go to my room,” Damien said and I nodded. 

Damien’s room was as you’d expect it to be. He wasn’t a clean freak even at best, and his room reflected it. Damien kept one hand on my wrist all the time and kept looking at me like if he didn’t, I’d disappear. Once the door to his room was shut, he turned and looked at me. He took my hand and looked at it like he’d never seen it before. 

“I’ve missed you so much,” I said and felt tears welling up. Damien had beautiful eyes, and when they looked at you without any laughter on his face, it felt like he was looking directly into your soul. He looked at me like that now, and I felt so small.

Damien leaned down and kissed me. It was not a kiss you preminize sex with, nor was it a kiss of two old friends. This was a kiss to see if it still worked. To see if we still worked. 

“I’ve missed you too,” he whispered, almost inaudible. His face was still frozen to some degree, disbelief and other miscellaneous emotions shining through only a little.

He pulled me into a hug again and propped his chin on the top of my head after I hunched into him. We ended up in his bed, fully clothed. He lay on his back and I lay on my side and using his arm and shoulder as a pillow. It was so good to lay with him again, in the very literal sense. I realized I’d missed the way he smelled. It had always seemed so trivial before, but now I felt so comforted by it. He smelled warm, of clean laundry and water and soap. When I laid with my head on his chest and his arm around me, I truly realized how much this had meant to me. Before, I’d said ‘I love you’ for his words and actions, but now I realized the inactive moments were just as important. I listened to his heartbeat and his breathing, and I almost fell asleep. 

“Ok, tell me what happened,” Damien said, and I opened my eyes. I shifted a little and got ready to speak.


	14. Reunion

I’d missed my friends. I’d not known Liam and Oz that well, but I’d known them to be good people. Oz was quiet but funny at the most random moments. Liam was a hipster to a degree not many people are, but he was nice. Though he could be cold and a little mean, he was nice. Somehow, he was like Damien. A little mean, but loyal if you befriend him. The only difference in that way is the temperature of their meanness. Damien was hot, Liam was cold. It came down to being that simple, and so even if I had to get over Liam’s initial coldness, I liked him. I didn’t understand how Oz stood to be his boyfriend, but I’m one to talk. Damien is my boyfriend after all. I guess that makes Oz and I kindred spirits.

Each reunion was better than the last. Polly had been surprised and emotional, but she’d been a little mad at me too. So was Damien, but it had more reason I think. Scott had no anger at my absence and return. As we gathered the friend group so I wouldn’t have to relay the story more than once, we spaced out everyone’s arrival as to not overwhelm me. I felt a little residually ill from all the magic I’d been subjected to.

Scott knew his way to Damien’s room without the help of a guide, be it one of his dads or Damien himself. Scott just opened the door talking, and stopped dead when he saw me. Slowly his disbelief melted to joy. I stood up from Damien’s bed and met him in the middle of his room and gave him a big hug. Scott was an excellent hugger. He was big and strong, and frequently wore flannels smelling of the wood in his pack’s lumber yard. He worked there part-time, most of his pack did.

Scott was so happy to see me. He was like a puppy, although he’d grown out of puppy a while ago. Liam and Oz were not as huggy to see me as Scott, although they seemed happy I was back.

Once everyone was stationed around me and I was sitting comfortably against Damien and using Scott’s shoulder as an armrest, I began to speak.

“This is going to be a long story, just warning you now,” I said and took a deep breath. “So, I was kidnapped. I guess I was higher on their list of priorities than I’d thought. I was staying over with Damien for the night and I got to the apartment first. Scott was out, so I was there alone. I made myself something to eat and was sitting on the couch when I heard someone fiddling with the door. They were cursing a little and I heard them trying to pick the lock or something like that. I put my toast down and locked myself in Damien’s bedroom when we started texting. The person got in pretty quickly and started searching the apartment. I called the cops, and the guy heard me. He turned out to be an Omen named KeithOlivia. He started to bang on the door and trying to talk to me but I didn’t talk back. I got the gun out of Damien’s bag and aimed it at the door.”

I stopped, a lump in my throat. I had tensed against Damien, who had felt it. He subtly squeezed my side and I felt more confident again.

“He got through the door and I fired. I’d never fired a gun before and so it went off and into the wall. I tried again as I was walking backward from him and I tripped. That's why one was in the ceiling. He walked toward me reciting my Oman ‘rights’ and grabbed me. He jumped through a portal, and I was in the Chaos Ocean. They put me in one of their cells and-” I paused, not wanting to relay the pain they’d inflicted, but I pushed forward. “And they tortured me. They thought that it would break me easier because of how long I’d been in this body.”

“They tortured you?” Scott asked and twisted to look up at me. “Why?”

I sighed. “When an Omen goes Truant, they have to be re-educated to make sure they don’t go Truant again. To do this, they need and Omen’s consent. I don’t know why, they just do. Not many Omens go willingly, so they torture us until we do. This usually means making us watch- horrible things happen. Most of us aren't really all that receptive to physical pain, so they infect our minds with horrors that just won’t go away. There comes a point for each of us that it just- it gets to be too much. After a while, after seeing so much, we break. We close our mental eyes and no longer exist. We transition into another entity entirely, but it’s like adding a bunch of new layers in photoshop. I became SavannahOwen, but at the base, I was still ImeldaChristopher. They got sloppy with me and left holes in the new layers that Imelda could leak through.”

I paused again, remembering the pain. I’d implied that they’d shown me horrible things and they had, just not in the way my friends were now thinking.

“Do you still remember the torture videos?” Oz asked, his eyes big. I shrugged, but of course, I did. Who can forget the love of your life breaking right before your eyes?

“A little. I kinda let them stay buried when I got back to being Imelda. They’ll probably resurface one day, but I mean, that’s what therapists are for,” I said and smiled and laughed. Liam laughed with me and so did Polly, but Oz, Scott, and Damien all looked worried. I shook it off and kept talking. “Anway, the reeducation is a little fuzzy too. I remember the standard birth procedures, but not much else. They questioned me about Truancy, and when they were satisfied Imelda was buried well enough, they sent me out as if I were a young Omen. They had me do a few basic missions and all the while, I was leaking through. I knew enough about my situation once they trusted me to be alone to find the Coven and get their help. I’m just glad they could.”

“Wait, your name was SavannahOwen?” Liam asked and I nodded. “Does that mean you could have been the Omen that showed up when we first came to visit?” 

I thought back. The missions I’d done while I was almost totally SavannahOwen were still fuzzy, but something drifted to the surface. I was in Owen form, and Damien stood before me, looking not great.

“I-” I paused. “I don’t know. A lot of the early missions are very fuzzy, but I kinda remember- let's just stick to I don’t know.”

“How do you know you are safe?” Polly asked quietly, her eyes suddenly welling with tears. I moved from Damien’s side and sat next to Polly and hugged her. After she got a hold of herself better, I parted the hug.

“To be honest, I wouldn’t be without the Coven,” I said and Polly raised her eyebrow. 

“How do you mean?” She asked.

“Along with bringing back my memory and changing me to look like the Imelda you all know and love, they put a charm of protection on me. The only catch, I can’t use Omen Portals anymore. I think it’s a fairly even handoff if you ask me anyway,” I said and smiled. “They can’t track me anymore, and if one with Ill wishes sees me, it will only see a random monster. I’m safe.”

“Wow,” Liam said and looked out into the void. “I really didn’t expect such niceness from them.”

“They kinda hated us,” Damien said and Scott nodded.

“I built some ties with the small one because she couldn’t reach the elevator buttons once, but she didn’t really appreciate being picked up so she could reach the button she needed,” Scott said without the slightest hint of irony. All of us burst out laughing, and the tension was cut. 

“So, now what?” Oz asked after a long silence. I looked at him and shrugged. I looked at Damien.

“I’ve got no idea,” I said and laughed. “Well, I do, but no way to do it. I want to take you guys on a vacation of some sort. And I need to get a witchcraft gift card for the Coven. They like Willamina’s Witchcraft.”

“My dads own most of a small island in the Pacific,” Damien tossed off casually.

“Would he let us use it?” I asked and Damien smirked.

“As long as we don’t trash the place,” He said.

“We wouldn’t want another beautiful island going up in flames, we all remember the Italian class trip in our sophomore year,” Liam said pointedly at Damien, who scowled.

“I don’t remember that,” I deadpanned.

“And Rome isn’t an island!” Damien complained. “I burned down a single fucking village, fight me you purple motherfucker.”

“Gladly, how about next winter in Alaska?” Liam asked and smirked. Damien wasn’t a fan of the cold, just as Liam wasn’t a fan of the sun. 

“Wait we're going to an Island?” Polly asked delightedly. “I can’t wait to work on my tan.”

“But you don’t have skin,” Scott pointed out and Polly scowled. 

“I don’t know how it works it just does. Can we get the whole gang back together, plus Imelda I mean? I haven’t seen Vera or Miranda in a while,” Polly asked.

“What about Amira and Vicky?” Scott added.

“And Brian and Valerie?” Oz added and looked at me. “Do you want to invite anyone?”

I laughed. “My sister?”

“There are enough beds for everyone,” Damien said and laughed. We all looked at each other, and I nodded.

“Sounds like a plan.”


	15. Epilogue

Half an island was more than enough for the 13 of us. Even Vera, who was so often busy with work could take a few days off to hang out on a beautiful island with her high school gang of friends. My sister Elise made the trip too, defecting for a few days. She could always say she got held up in traffic. No matter how long, the Omen Counsel would buy it. The Omen Counsel loved Elise, so she could get away with basically anything. Because she’s a total goodie two shoes, she hardly uses her good reputation for evil.

Damien’s dads were cool with us staying on their island, and came with us. They were sure to stay on the end that was far away from us, but they wanted to keep an eye on us. We were a bunch of kids with poor decision-making skills alone on half an island full of empty houses. At one point Damien almost burnt down Miranda’s yacht, so I guess they had the right idea about our danger levels. 

“You know,” Elise began. “This isn’t so bad. Getting drunk on beaches your boyfriend’s dads own isn’t such a bad life.”

“I don’t know how much longer it will be the norm,” I said and sighed. “I mean, his dads expect him to be the king of Hell now because of his backtrack in grief. I worry he’ll have to do the whole abdication talk again.”

“That doesn’t sound fun,” Elise said and took a sip of her margarita. Elise had said that however nice frozen margaritas are, they don’t compare to shaken. I tended to agree with her. “And in other bad news, you are mortal.”

“I’m not sure I count that as bad news,” I said and sighed.

“So you are aware of it?” She asked and I nodded.

“Yes. It happened when I was getting my memories back. It was a byproduct of one of the spells they tried on me. And I'm not wholly sure it wasn’t a blessing,” I replied and Elise turned to me.

“You think inevitable death is a blessing?” She asked. 

“Well, yeah. I’ve watched the rise and fall of empires. I’ve been around since Jesus was alive. And you’ve seen even more. You are so much older than me. How can you not think of death as a blessing of sorts?” I asked while Elise looked off into the ocean.

“I suppose it’s a blessing for the earth. When someone dies their energy is recycled into food for carrion eaters and your minerals melt back into the dirt from whence they came, but not for the minds involved. I don’t care about the body you use decaying, but I will miss your mind,” She said, still gazing at the post-sunset ocean.

“I guess you’re right,” I said and sighed. “But I don’t think I’m wrong either. I’ve seen enough of history. I’m tired of being a pebble on a 3 lane highway, I wanna be a car driving over the pebble, I’m tired of feeling useless as a being. Why was I put here if not to contribute in a way that makes the world a better place?”

“And you think dying will contribute in a meaningful way?” She asked and I nodded.

“Matter cannot be created or destroyed,” I replied. “By going through Oman portals, I was both creating and destroying matter. Now I obey the laws of physics. And now my matter is transitory. I sweat and lose mass, I overeat and gain weight, I work out and lose mass as a result. I’ve already begun to feel move alive, having to worry about such things.”

“You were alive before,” Elise pointed out and I laughed.

“Have you ever had sex with a mortal?” I asked and Elise blushed. No matter what incarnation she took on, she was a blusher.

“I’ve not spent enough time in a human form to have done so,” she said. “I’ve begotten children in the Chaos oceans, but that really isn’t the same. I’m sure you know what that is like.”

“It is nothing like sex when you have a body,” I said and laughed. “You should try it. Having a body that you use for a while and get a connection to is a magical experience, let alone good sex. You’d understand the whole thing if you cared about the matter you make and destroy.” 

“Maybe,” She said and shrugged. “Maybe I’m just scared. I don’t have the same luck you do.”

“What do you mean?” I asked and Elise scoffed. 

“You go Truant for 19 years and do all the fun things in the world. You meet good people and eat amazing food, you enroll in college and get good grades. You meet a demon boy who you hate at first but turns out to be the love of your life. Even after your kidnapped and taken back to the Chaos Oceans, you manage to get out and set your life back to order, with little chance of the Omen Counsel getting you back. If you don’t call that lucky, then your just as crazy as I thought,” Elise said and sipped her margarita. “That being said, I was already kinda thinking about joining you in Truancy.”

“Really?!” I asked and grinned. Elise smiled and swirled her drink with her ice cube.

“Yeah, but only thinking about it. I’d need time,” She said and sighed. “I’d want the same protection you have, and I’d want to keep my immortality.”

“Wherever I go, you’ll have a home there,” I said and smiled at my sister. She nodded.

“We’ll see. Once I get back to the Chaos Oceans, I’m going to take some time off. See if its worth it to stay. If I decide no, I’m going to take some time away from you on earth to see for myself,” Elise said and I nodded.

“Understandable,” I said and smiled. “I’d recommend fast food before you give up your immortality. And unsafe sex. I have to worry about condoms and birth control now. Figure that shit out once you figure out what you like before you have to worry about babies and STDs.”

“Sounds like a plan,” She said and laughed. “I’m going to bed. I’m tired.”

“Ok, goodnight,” I said.

“Goodnight,” She replied and walked inside the house she was sleeping in. I looked out onto the ocean and smiled. I looked up when I heard someone walking towards me, and Damien took Elise’s spot. 

“Hey,” He said and took my hand and I smiled.

“Hi,” I replied. 

“You remember that one you owe me?” He asked and I frowned.

“What?” I asked and Damien smiled.

“When we played Colf,” He said. “I won and you owed me one. I’m thinking I want to call in my one if you’d be willing.”

“What were you thinking?” I asked, almost hoping he’d make a gross joke this time.

“Come to bed with me,” he said. I was a little surprised at his less than usually straightforward language. 

“Am I sensing a euphemism?” I asked and Damien smiled in his old devilish way. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

“It seems your language hasn’t deteriorated.” 

“And yours seems to have improved.”

“Let’s just go fuck already.”

“I’m sold.”

\---

“What are we going to do now?” I asked. Damien lay next to me, his eyes gently closed. He looked immaculate in the moonlight. He wore nothing but the bedsheet nest enclosing us, and that was just how I liked him. Damien sighed and smiled without opening his eyes.

“We can do anything,” he said, his voice quiet and content. “Anything you want, as long as I’m by your side.”

“I’m mortal now,” I said and Damien sighed.

“I know, I felt it when I saw you in the palace for the first time,” He said and I shifted in bed to look at him better.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” I asked.

“I didn’t know for real, and I didn’t know if you knew,” He said and opened his eyes and looked over at me. “I don’t mind it. I mean, I’m mortal.”

“I’m glad I won’t live forever,” I said.

“Why?” he asked and I smiled.

“I feel like I’ve seen enough of history. And I don’t want to outlive you,” I said and he blinked.

“I’d never even thought of that,” he said. “And I don’t particularly want to right now. Turn over.” 

I did as instructed and Damien wrapped his arms around me. 

“It’s time to sleep now, we can do anything you want to do tomorrow,” Damien said and yawned. He closed his eyes and went to sleep. I smiled, and let the arms of Damien and the arms of sleep pull me away to a better place. I was not afraid anymore. I might now be aging, but I’d never felt so young. I was young and unafraid, and there was nothing I couldn’t do.


End file.
